Birthday Trip 2016

So I told Robyn that this year I wanted a trip for my birthday.  However, one of the funnest things about a trip is actually planning it.  So I also told her I wanted to plan my trip.

The trip began on my birthday, and I told her that my birthday was up to her to plan.  She did an excellent job.  She told me to get off at 3, and she bought us tickets to see the new X-Men movie.  So I got to hang out with my friends Jean, Cyclops, Wolverine, Mystique, and Professor X.  It was a fantastic way to kick off the trip.  That evening was spent in a hotel in Salt Lake to give us a head start in our travels.

For my trip, I decided that I wanted to see a few of the things in Utah that I had heard about but never actually experienced.

The first of those things was the Golden Spike National Historic Site.  Every child in Utah learned the song about how the transcontinental railroad was completed in Promontory, Utah.  It's a little site in the middle of the desert in the middle of nowhere.  But we drove out there and checked it out.

You have to get a picture next to a sign as proof you were there.

They had a whole reenactment where the train pulled up and people gave speeches and then drove in the final spikes.

Who doesn't love trains?

It was just like in 1869.  I bet back then everybody at their phones out taking pictures.

I made Robyn stand on the railroad for a picture.  She totally didn't get run over by a train.

The next location I took us to was the Spiral Jetty.  It's also in the desert in the middle of nowhere.  It sits on the shore of the Great Salt Lake.  It was made by a sculptor and depending on the level of the lake, sometimes it is below water and sometimes it is not (like right now).

Selfie with the jetty.

I made Robyn walk the whole spiral with me.  She tried to cut across, but I wouldn't let her cheat herself from the full experience.  We got to the center and had to take a precious pic.

Doesn't she make the spiral look precious?

The next event wasn't a place I'd heard about my whole life like the first two, but it was on my Utah bucket list.  We went to the Eccles Dinosaur Park in Ogden.

They had mosquitoes in amber, so I'm not sure what the holdup is.  They should clearly have clones some dinosaurs by now.

There were lots of bones to look at.

They had an indoor museum that was more of the traditional natural history museum, and then outside they had lots of dinosaur statues.  There were little signs that could teach you about the different dinosaurs, so it was fun.

Just hanging with the triceratops.

Look how calm she looks even though she's about to be eaten.

That concluded our Saturday activities, but fear not!  There was more fun to be had on Sunday.

We wanted to have some sort of church experience, and another thing on my Utah bucket list was to attend a taping of Music and the Spoken Word.  They were doing a memorial day special and it was really fun.  There was a TV that was showing the live broadcast, and I liked to watch the cameras move around and see how they achieved the shots that were being shown on the TV.

Before the broadcast they explained to us that it was live and that the acoustics in the tabernacle are very good, so we need to be very quiet.  I was totally reverent.

We didn't take any pictures inside the tabernacle (they weren't allowed during the broadcast and before and after there wasn't much to take a picture of.)  But naturally, we got a selfie in front of the temple on our way out.

The next Sunday event was to visit Gilgal garden.  It's a little garden tucked away in a residential neighborhood.  I had seen pictures of the Joseph Smith Sphinx and had wanted to check out the whole garden for a long time.

Pictures of signs: very important.

When I saw it I just started grinning and laughing.  I think Robyn was embarrassed to be with me.

I told Robyn I needed a picture of her in front of something.  She chose this arch and those giant books behind her.

At this point, it was about lunch time and Robyn wanted to be home.  I only had one more stop on my list and it was the Summum Pyramid.  It's a pyramid that actually performs mummifications.  (Who knew that was still a thing?)

Robyn didn't even get out of the car, so I had to take my selfie with the pyramid.  After seeing X-Men: Apocalypse, I was pretty sure Apocalypse was hiding inside and probably acquiring new powers he would use for world domination.  But I didn't see him.

Finally, we could head home and take a good afternoon nap in our own beds.  I'd say it was a successful birthday trip.

You Better Belize It

The second stop on our Caribbean Cruise was in Belize City, Belize.

The whole time we were there, people were saying things like, "Unbelizeable!" and "You better Belize it!".  I was in the country for less than 8 hours and I was tired of those jokes by the time I left.  I can't imagine how the locals feel.  (Though, the person who said it the most was the guide on our tour bus, so it's completely her fault if she experiences too much of it.)  In order to give you the full Belize experience, I have made sure to title this post with a stupid Belize pun.  You're welcome.

We had a great experience in Belize.  We got to see some Mayan ruins as well as lots of wildlife.  But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

The tour started on a bus, of course.  I wasn't nearly as frightened by this one as I was by the one in Honduras.  We were still on a very thin dirt road (our tour guide said that the massage on our rear ends was complimentary as we bounced down the road) but there were less children and wildlife that looked like they were going to be run over.

The bus took us to an Archaeological site called Alton Ha where they are actively uncovering Mayan ruins.  This was important because climbing a Mayan pyramid was on my bucket list.

That's the first one I got to climb.

Some of the structures weren't fully uncovered.

I made sure to document my first steps of the climb, for your viewing pleasure.

When I get to the top of the first pyramid, I took this panorama of the surrounding area.

After the first pyramid, they quickly ushered us over to the second, and larger pyramid.  This one is the temple of the Sun God.

The temple of the sun god.

I wanted a close up picture of the temple with the sign.  I got our tour guide lady as a bonus.

This is from the top of the Temple of the Sun God, looking down on the first pyramid we climbed.

Looking precious on the top of the temple

After Alton Ha, our trip was not over.  We walked back to the bus, but first we had to wade through all of the locals who wanted to sell us stuff.  I wasn't interested in souvenirs, but when one lady held up a bag of pre-cut mangoes, I clearly wasn't going to say no.  Just for the record, those mangoes were possibly the best thing I ate on that trip, and I ate some amazing food on the ship.

The bus took us to a small resort where they fed us lunch and then we got on a boat that took us down the river, through an ocean inlet and back to the dock where we had started.  Our tour guide made sure to point out all of the wildlife.  It was funny because we had booked this excursion because I wanted to see the ruins, but I ended up enjoying the boat ride just as much as the first part.

The boat would periodically "turn on the AC".  That meant we would go faster.  Here are John and Carol enjoying some AC.

Some bats clinging to the tree.

Can you see the crocodile?  It's not a great picture, but he's there, I promise.

If you thought the crocodile picture was bad, this one is even worse.  The dark blob in the tree is a howler monkey.

A cashew tree.  The natives use the green fruit for eating and making alcohol and each fruit has only one nut.

We saw billions of iguanas, but this was the best pic I got.

When the boat made its way back to the ocean, there was a little area where we stopped for about ten minutes to watch manatees.  They were sooo cool!  I didn't get a picture of them, because they would just stick their noses out of the water for a half a second and then they were gone.  But it was super neat to sit and watch one pop up and then another pop up a few feet away only seconds later.

After watching manatees for a bit the boat started going way faster than we knew it could as it zipped us through the ocean.  It dropped us off at the dock, and we poked around the city a bit.  There wasn't a whole lot to see, but we did gain some true wisdom from a chocolate store:

True wisdom

We also took the time to get the obligatory picture in front of a sign.

All in all, Belize was unbelizeable.